Raoul Dufy (1877-1953) is best known today for his brightly coloured palette and the cheerfulness of his subjects, from which any form of doubt or anxiety is banished. This exhibition invites us to discover his artistic development, from the revelation of Henri Matisse’s Luxe, Calme et Volupté, in which the need to bring out the ‘miracle of the imagination’ became fully apparent to him, to the development of his touch in relation to that of Paul Cézanne, and finally the blossoming of his own pictorial language in his studio in Vence.
His singular style unfolds throughout the exhibition in landscapes of Normandy and Provence, the motif of the studio, harbour views and bathers, and the musicality of parties and receptions. And while the Norman artist was first and foremost a painter, he also sought very early on to transpose the recurring motifs of his imagination into book illustration, textile design and ceramics. This project is an opportunity to rediscover the richness of the Musée des Beaux-Arts’ Dufy collection, which is largely due to the generosity of the artist’s wife, Eugénie Brisson from Nice.
